


only see the sky

by baggvinshield



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Finale, Sharing a Bed, Will Graham's conflicting emotions, inexplicable boats, suicidal thoughts sort of, surviving the fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6097015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baggvinshield/pseuds/baggvinshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will wanted to die. He still kind of does, which is why it's so unsettling that he's also pretty happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only see the sky

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged this fic with 'suicidal thoughts' but that's really only if you squint. Will's just wrestling with some residual morality, I suppose. This was kicking around in my head for a while so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ hope you like.

* * *

 

 _Anything past the horizon_  
_is invisible, it can only be imagined. You want to see the future but_ _  
you only see the sky._

 _-_ Richard Siken, "Road Music"

* * *

 

  
He’s dreaming again. This time it’s a beach littered with broken sea glass strewn about his bare feet in shades of green, emerald, juniper, cutting into his soles as he walks. It’s dark, it’s night time, and he's looking, but he can't remember what for, or who.

 

He turns, a sudden gust off the water lifting his hair from his forehead and blowing sand into his eyes, and he squints through the wind to see a bloody trail of footprints in the sand behind him. There is only one set of prints and he thinks vaguely that there should be two.

 

A dark shape in the distance catches his eye, stark against the moonlit sand. He sees it nestled like driftwood or ship wreckage where the seafoam washes up and recedes and the beach begins.

 

It's Hannibal, face down, and Will can only see his back and dark clothing but he'd recognize him in a crowd of thousands, or bloody and disassembled, or in the space he leaves in a room he’s just gone from, or laid out by the sea as he is now.

 

He's dead, and Will doesn't have to look any closer to know that's true.

 

He wants to go to him anyway. He crunches across the sand and broken glass, green like wine bottles or cicada wings, wincing as he cuts his feet. He reaches Hannibal, grabs handfuls of his wet clothing and rolls him over onto his back.

 

Will's breath catches. He cannot see his face.

 

Will wakes with a start, trembling limbs tangled in a sweaty sheet on the small cot in the belly of the ship. He sits up, breathing ragged. He rubs at his face, hard at his eyes, and strips out of his soaked t-shirt. He stands in the tiny kitchenette and wipes the sweat from his face with a damp rag.

 

He stands still and lets the motion of the boat flow into him, up through his legs and past his belly and into his chest, until he’s in sync with the vessel and the ocean that bears it, and can let some of the tension out of his shoulders.

 

Will finds Hannibal above deck, sitting in one of the cheap plastic chairs with the crank battery radio on low, tuned to a station with someone speaking Portuguese through the static. Hannibal sits with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap as if he’s dressed in one of his three-piece suits rather than the light pants and white t-shirt he wears now. His head is tipped back and his eyes are closed.

 

Will feels an unbidden sense of something dangerously close to comfort just at the sight of him, relaxed and still, the early morning sun lifting the lightest greys in his hair and highlighting his dark blonde strands. He might even sigh aloud. Whatever the cause, Hannibal notes his presence and opens his eyes, turning his head.

 

“Hello Will.”

 

“Morning,” Will grates out, “is there coffee?”

 

Hannibal does a fair impression of someone trying not to literally turn up their nose. “There’s some instant left, and only that, I’m afraid.”

 

Will foregoes the coffee for now and moves to stand against the handrail, coming closer to Hannibal in doing so. The boat isn't very large, and it's close quarters for them both below and above deck. He looks out on the water, choppy little waves breaking the surface and turning the reflected sunlight into something crackling and broken.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

If Will didn’t know better he might believe the tentative note in Hannibal’s voice to be something genuine.

 

“How’s your gunshot wound?” Will borrows the voice of someone who doesn’t care what the answer to their question is; he’s fairly proud of how it sounds.

 

“Healing. Feeling much better.”

 

Will nods once and turns to go back below deck and stir coffee crystals into lukewarm bottled water.

 

This silence between them is of a different variety than they’ve managed before. It doesn’t feel like the calm before a storm, or the comfortable quiet moments Will imagines friends must share sometimes when being in one another’s company is all that’s needed. It’s a silence neither empty nor peaceful; less like the moment of quiet expectation just as a fisherman feels a tug on his line before he knows it’s a fish, and more like the impossible full second of weighted silence that begins halfway through pulling the trigger and ends with the inevitable sound of the gunshot. This time together feels that way, and Will favors this suspension of motion, would like to keep their forward momentum arrested as long as possible, delaying the kickback.

 

“What was your dream about?” Hannibal has followed him down.

 

Will laughs, a choked sound he lets evolve into a small smile. He looks a Hannibal, finds him watching him expectantly, expression a lie of passivity. Will knows what waits under that carefully constructed facade of civility - he knows the hot breath and bloodied mouth, dark shining eyes that can barely meet Will’s and the ragged rasping voice tangled with want - and of all the dark and terrible things inside himself he was afraid of being lost to, Will can hardly believe that most terrifying of all is the need to see Hannibal like that again, and as often as possible. Feeling powerful while taking a life turned out to be nothing in comparison to how it felt to have Hannibal look at him like he is something worth giving in to.

 

Will can lie too, luckily for him. He keeps smiling and says, “I dreamed I'd killed you,” easy as can be.

 

He knows that Hannibal will spend time trying to figure out whether Will’s words bore his deceit, or if it was his warm, contented expression. Their old game of truth and lies, lies hiding truth and truth masquerading as lies, only this time Will knows that what’s at stake for Hannibal is nothing less than his heart.

 

Will isn’t sure he has a heart of his own anymore, and whether he’d want to give it to Hannibal if he did, or if he’d protect it instead, lock it away and take it back to Molly, maybe, limping like a stray to her door. The notion that maybe he doesn’t have a heart because he’d already given it to Hannibal, gave it to him when he reached for his hand on the cliff, mingling their blood and the blood of the dragon between their skin, crosses Will’s mind. If he’s to be truly honest with himself, maybe it’s gone because he gave it to Hannibal long before the cliff, and his death will be a delayed reaction.

 

He tells himself it doesn’t much matter at this point, one way or another.

 

“Is the autopilot still set?” he asks.

 

Hannibal nods.

 

“Good. I'll keep watch for a while. Get some sleep.”

 

Will just catches the unguarded wariness in Hannibal's expression before it's schooled into passivity again.

 

“Can I trust you not to throw yourself overboard?”

 

Ah, there it is. The tiniest bit of anger slipping through. (Will knows it could be concern, but mixing the two together in some sort of emotional confusion seems such a mundane human mistake he isn’t willing to credit Hannibal with it. If he’s angry, let him be. Will isn’t exactly thrilled himself.)

 

Will’s cheek hurts as his lips curl in a smile. He turns to climb the ladder that will take him above deck. “I'd change the sheets if I were you - it was a particularly vivid dream.”

  


_Three weeks ago_

 

Will wakes and losses consciousness and wakes again. He's aware of the cold, the wet, the hard jagged rocks of the coast, the smell of the sea, pain, and something hot pressed against him. Hannibal. Hannibal's labored breathing. His shivering body.

 

He tries to speak. He chokes. He digs frozen fingers into Hannibal's skin.

 

“You can't die without me,” he thinks he says.

 

Hannibal's eyes, dark and bright in the moonlight. “There's a boat,” he whispers. How they get themselves there is lost on Will, who still isn't sure he's not dead. Maybe this is just the last seconds of his life, a dream his brain supplies him with as it's deprived of oxygen.

 

“I'm supposed to be dead,” Will tells Hannibal - maybe - or maybe he only thinks it over and over again as they make their way through the rocks and water.

 

Then there are blankets that aren’t wet, injections, surgery, stitches. The vague awareness of Hannibal leaning over him, cleaning the wound in his cheek. His pupils are small as pinpricks.

 

“Jesus,” Will stutters, “what the hell did you give yourself?”

 

“Amphetamines. Necessary, but somewhat dangerous in my present condition. I may become tachycardic.”

 

“Jesus,” Will mumbles again, the drugs Hannibal has him on slowing his brain to a near standstill.

 

“You were hypothermic,” Hannibal tells him. “You’re warming up. Sleep.”

 

“Let me die,” Will tries to say. Hannibal lays a burning hand to Will's forehead. Tears sting his eyes.

 

The last thing he perceives before slipping into darkness again is an image of Hannibal, real or imagined, performing surgery on the exit wound the bullet left in his abdomen. _Liver, or kidney_ , Will thinks absently, and tries to say again _Don't die, not now, I couldn’t stand it_ , but his mouth decidedly won't work anymore.

 

When he next wakes he knows he's on the boat, Hannibal is nearby but out of sight, and Will is terribly, uncompromisingly alive.

  


_Present_

 

Will returns to their tiny quarters below deck. Hannibal is stretched out on his back on the bed, hands on his belly, casual, possibly asleep.

 

“Shall I go up and take watch?”

 

Will shakes his head and toes off his shoes. “I dropped anchor. We’re near the coast again, but I think we’re safe.”

 

“We’re far enough from the U.S. now that we’re likely ahead of the international news.” Hannibal purses his lips. “Not accounting for Ms. Lounds, of course.” He turns to look at Will. “Should I get up so you can sleep?”

 

Will shakes his head no and slides into the narrow bed. They’ve shared it before, out of necessity, though after their initial time spent healing they had tried to make sure at least one of them was up top most of the time, keeping watch.

 

His shoulder brushes against Hannibal’s and he readjusts, puts space between them. Hannibal doesn’t move. Will stares at the ceiling.

 

Hannibal breaks the silence just as Will is starting to think he’ll go back to sleep.

 

“Did you really kill me, in your dream?”

 

“Nightmare,” Will corrects automatically. “Yes and no. I wasn’t killing you - I had already done it. When I took us over the cliff.” He turns to meet Hannibal’s gaze and holds it a moment before looking away.

 

In an uncommon display of restraint, Hannibal seems to mull that over. He doesn’t speak again for some moments. Then, “You wanted us to die. You were upset that we were still alive.”

 

Will says nothing.

 

“You still are.”

 

Will wants to tell him that he can’t imagine a world without him in it, that this feeling of being conjoined is dangerous because how can a body survive if half of it is ripped away? He wants to ask Hannibal if what he feels is as jagged, as spiky and sharp as this; if Hannibal would have survived if Will hadn’t.

 

He wants to ask about his heart. If Hannibal has it in keeping for him, if he even knows. Will knows what he knows about Hannibal, but since he left him in the kitchen in Baltimore he hasn’t had much grasp on what he knows Hannibal knows about him.

 

“I’m not upset that you’re alive,” he says, quiet. “I probably should be, but I can’t seem to manage it.”

 

He can practically feel Hannibal radiating self-congratulation.

 

“I would prefer that I had died, though. I think it would be… easier.” He swallows, tries to cage his words up in his throat, and gives up. “I would have been glad to die with you,” Will whispers.

 

The feeling of Hannibal’s distress is so clear Will might as well have watched the smile slip from his face. “You still berate yourself for what you find beautiful.”

 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Will goes on, voice hushed, “to fight so hard and for so long against something that will ruin you, ruin who you think you are, and then to just give in to it anyway. Like you never had a choice.”

 

Hannibal is silent again, and then Will feels him move, slowly, slightly, until Hannibal is brushing his fingertips across the back of Will’s hand and then pressing lightly into his upturned palm. Will looks down at their hands, nearly intwined.

 

“Don’t I?” Hannibal whispers.

 

Will turns his head and looks. Hannibal’s eyes are dark in the dim lighting, expression neutral but for the way his throat works when he swallows. Will sees him for an instant kneeling in the snow, outside his house in Wolf Trap; Hannibal in Baltimore, reaching out to cup his cheek; Hannibal in the Uffizi, offering him a tired grateful smile.  

 

Hannibal averts his gaze. Warmth trickles and then seeps and then expands in Will’s chest. He closes his hand around Hannibal’s fingertips.

 

“I don’t want to want to die.”

 

“And I don’t want you to want to die. So we agree on that, at least.”

 

“I knew how we could die together - how can we live together, Hannibal? We’re terrible for each other.” Will smiles, almost contrite. “Ruinous.”

 

Hannibal is looking at their hands. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Experience tells me that much of what I can imagine about how you might feel or act will turn out to be disastrously wrong.” Will laughs, and his wounded face stings with it. Hannibal smiles a little, tilts his head in the equivalent of a shrug. “And my reactions to you are almost equally disastrous. Don’t you feel that we’ve reached a sort of impasse?”

 

“Nothing left to do, nowhere left to go but through, you mean?”

 

“We have tried nearly everything else.”

 

Will feels warm. He tries to let himself slip into the feeling, try it on for size, recognize it as contentment. He slides down and over a little, conscious of Hannibal’s wounded side, slipping their hands more firmly together, and rests his head against Hannibal’s shoulder. He looks back up at the ceiling. He doesn’t want a world without Hannibal in it - and maybe he ought to be thinking _God help me,_ but God must either not exist or else not care, because Will gave him a perfect shot to take them both out and he passed on the offer. And here they are.

 

And that must be Will’s heart being grateful for it, taking solace in Hannibal’s presence, aching at the thought of separating from him again, because it certainly isn’t his rational thoughts. He supposes he got to keep his heart after all. He figures he might as well give it to Hannibal, who in all likelihood probably can’t do it much more damage than Will already has.

  
He takes a breath, feels vaguely that it’s like the cliff all over again, the moment before the push. He doesn’t cling to the metaphor, lets it go instead. “All right,” he says on a shaking breath.

  
Hannibal’s hand tightens gently around his own.

 

 


End file.
